Read this article in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi
Na Olan Leimomi Fisher a me Kahakuhailoa Poepoe, Kuaʻāina Ulu ʻAuamo
Two companion bills this session introduced by House Speaker Nadine Nakamura and Senate President Ron Kouchi seek to explicitly authorize the Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) to enter into community co-management agreements.
Community-based biocultural resource management in Hawaiʻi would be more effective and sustainable if supported by long-term co-management agreements.
Creation of this bill was led by the Hui Makaʻāinana o Makana (Hui), a Kauaʻi-based nonprofit that perpetuates ʻike kūpuna through mālama ʻāina and other co-management activities within the Hāʻena State Park. The Hui has worked with DLNR to mālama their ancestral ʻāina in Hāʻena for decades and is widely known as a successful community-based management example in Hawaiʻi. The Hui was recently offered a concession agreement, yet has not secured a long-term community co-management agreement to address the various shared management functions between them and DLNR.
Although community-government partnerships exist through different types of arrangements, the lack of statutory authority and no formalized process makes it unnecessarily difficult for grassroots communities to best co-manage their treasured wahi pana.
It is therefore critical for active Native Hawaiian cultural practitioners, farmers, subsistence fishermen, and other mālama ʻāina experts that this bill is passed.
DLNR has long recognized that it cannot effectively manage the state’s vast public trust resources alone, and grassroots communities like Hāʻena have proven that place-based community co-management is a key solution to help carry the weight of this kuleana. To ensure the long-term health and wellbeing of our ʻāina and people, it is imperative that Native Hawaiian cultural and traditional values and practices be implemented more across Hawaiʻi.
What better way to do that than to empower those with the most personal investment in and intimate knowledge of their home – the grassroots Native Hawaiian and local communities themselves – to mālama their own places for future generations to love and enjoy?
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